Thursday, 5 March 2009

Vernon Bogdanor is away with the fairies

In a piece in the Times this morning that had me guffawing aloud at it's sheer political naivity and hopeless desperation, Vernon Bogdanor urges the LibDems to join with Labour in a government of 'national reconstruction'. The irony that this would be like giving the Luftwaffe the contract to repair bomb-damage to London seems to pass Bogdanor by entirely; the hope that the LibDems would pollute themselves with Labour's electorally poisonous liability is no more probable than Dr Mark Porter setting up practice with Dr Harold Shipman. But it's the sheer, naked, unalloyed stupidity of the following throw-away from Vernon that tickled me most

It was because the forces of progress were so often divided that the 20th century was a Conservative century.

Yes, chum. And the 21st will probably also be a century of the right, if not the Conservatives than some other incarnation. Because the right are the true progressives, and always have been.

In contrast, the politics of the left are wholly regressive and always have been. In the past 11 years of left wing government the nation has regressed to early 19th century levels of literacy, record crime at Georgian levels and atomisation of our society, a deepening social divide and a life expectancy in Labour strongholds that's lower than Algeria's, £80bn a year in taxes paid to 5m welfare slaves for no point whatsoever and our economy shattered. How much further back do you want Labour to take us? Just a few decades of socialism in Russia regressed that nation about 600 years.

Working far too hard with no prospect of a break in the near future keeping my own bit of the construction industry in work; not even a few seconds break between finishing a meeting and dealing with urgent messages, and the relentless tsunami of email from people needing to be told what to do rather than doing it. Too many days without a break even for a sandwich, and a week in which I've been going through Dun & Bradstreets on some very old and big firms with eyewatering bank liabilities that are going to kill them so I'm telling them I can't use them ... and with all that on my back, and staying my sweet, calm, reasonable self in the factory, some perfumed little prick mouthing inanities from his Oxford turret is just a millimetre too far.